Holy phototropism!

In last week’s episode, the Holy Family Potato had just sprouted roots. Shortly after I posted, a shoot came up, and then another. Interestingly, the shoots seem to be coming from places other than the spiky growth that the potato had before I planted it. The shoots are amazingly phototropic. Here is a series of photos tracking their movement toward the light from the window over the course of a day.

Friday, March 20, 8:11 a.m. 

11:00 a.m.

4:40 p.m.

And here is a photo today to show how quickly the shoots are growing. I hope the plant does not become too spindly before I can put it in the greenhouse.

Tuesday, March 24

Last week, Terry found a hawk pellet. I had never heard of a hawk pellet. I had only heard of owl pellets. If you have never heard of owl pellets, let me explain that owls occasionally hack up balls of fur and bones that they are unable to digest. I looked it up in our Peterson Field Guide to Animal Tracks and found that, sure enough, hawks do have pellets, as do Clark’s nutcracker, glaucous-winged gulls, and magpies. Who knew? I further learned that the balls of fur can be distinguished from mammal carnivore scat (poop) by the absence of “digestive residue.” The pellets are pure fur, feathers, and bone.

The pellet was about 2.5” long, which is big for a red-tailed hawk. The picture in the book says 1.5” to 2.” I was hoping it was evidence of a great horned owl, which would be way cool. The range for great horned owl, according to the book, is 1.75” to 4.25,” quite a range. The book goes on to say that there is so much variability in pellets that the only way to be sure who it came from is by knowing what kind of bird perches above where the pellet was found. On that basis we must conclude that it is, in fact, a red-tailed hawk pellet.

Hawk pellet as found, measuring 2.5" long

Yesterday I put on exam gloves and pulled it apart. For something that looked like a giant ball of dryer lint, it was surprisingly difficult to separate. The fur was packed tighter than I thought fur could ever be, almost felted. What I found were many, many tiny rodent incisors (curved orange objects in the photo) and jaws. These must be the most difficult parts of the animals to digest. It’s good to know our hawk is doing its part to keep the mice population under control.

Two tiny rodent lower jaws, above, plus orange incisors, below

More single incisors, far left, a somewhat larger rodent upper jaw, left, (note two rows of teeth) and lower jaw, right